A year of suffering: Rohingya Muslims have no hope of going home

Photo: ANI

One year has passed since Rohingya Muslims travelled to Bangladesh after the Myanmar military and Buddhist mobs launched waves of attacks on Rohingya Muslims on August 25, 2017, killing people and emptying villages. However, there’s no hope of their return to Myanmar. The international community sees the move as a calculated attempt to drive the Rohingya from the country while the UN terms it ethnic cleansing.

Buddhist-majority Myanmar says it is ready to take back those who fled. But it refuses to recognise the Rohingya as citizens. Myanmar government labels them “Bengali” illegal immigrants.

They face racist violence and they are not entitled to any rights. According to the UN, it is the minority which faces the most racist violence. They also face a travel ban. Several villages of Rohingyas have been put to flames by the Myanmar security forces.

One year ago, on 25 August 2017, violence in Rakhine State, Myanmar, set off a new wave of destruction and fear that pushed more than 720,000 refugees – more than half of them children – into the Cox’s Bazar district of Bangladesh.

Within a month, nearly 500,000 children, women and men had fled over the border, the pall of smoke from scores of smouldering villages visible from Bangladesh.